Warmer State
by withthecherrytrees
Summary: i think i'll find a warmer state / i think i'll head west / and i probably won't make it back here / but i'll do my best


_my bones they creak when i wake_

 _and the longer i stay here the more my hands shake_

Isolde never liked to stay in one place for very long. Isolde was restless. A gypsy soul. "Flighty and unreliable," Isolde's mother had called her. No, she never could stay still.

And she had spent too long here, in the compound. In New York. Fury had dragged Isolde here kicking and screaming, insisting that she was a danger to yourself, and to others.

For a time, it had worked. The Avengers trained her, and she found a way to control her powers.

"Breathe," Bruce would tell her. "Breathe through it. Take notes on where you are, and make yourself count the things you know."

One. Isolde was in a room.

Two. There was a person with her. Bruce.

Three. She had two feet, and they were on the ground.

Four. Her hands were on fire.

Five. She couldn't breathe.

"Breathe," Bruce would tell her.

Isolde got better at breathing, and it seemed to her that with each breath, the fire would ebb back into itself and she found she could open her mouth and her eyes and the rooms she was in stopped bursting into flames.

She got better at it.

She got better.

Tony still called her "Fireball," though.

And when Steve and Bucky came to the compound after their time in Wakanda, she found herself breathing even easier.

And if Bucky eventually knocked on her door late one night and asked if he could sleep in her bed, no one had to know how easily she breathed with his presence next to her.

But the months passed, and the heaviness began to settle itself into her bones and curl up there. Isolde wasn't used to waking up to the same four walls, the same steady breathing of the same person next to her each morning. It felt like she was edging closer and closer to the top of a hill, and she couldn't see the other side, but she knew the fall was coming.

She was reaching the point where she'd never spent this much time in one place before, and as much as she tried to deny it to herself, she knew this couldn't last.

But she wouldn't think about that. Not when she waking up to Bucky's arm having mysteriously curled itself around her in the night and his lips suspiciously close to her ear.

It's only sleeping, Isolde would think. And she knew he'd wake in a few minutes and slink back to his room before anyone else in the compound woke. And she knew it was only because he liked the presence of someone next to him while he slept, the comfort that comes from knowing there's someone there to shake you out of your sleeping hell-scape, should you wander into it by mistake.

Isolde liked it, too, since flashes of fire and screams tended to enter her mind a bit too often for her liking when her eyes were closed.

Maybe that was why she had stayed for so long. All the people here had something in their past that chased them through the dark, and so she didn't feel quite so broken in comparison.

But Isolde also knew that all these people had been heroes and done something, anything, in their lives to deserve to be an Avenger. And all she had done was set fire to a few too many people, places, and things, and get dragged here by Nick Fury himself to keep her from hurting any others.

Fuck, she couldn't even be sent out on a mission because she might set fire to the plane.

Bucky's metal fingers drifting across her stomach as he shifted and rolled over jerked Isolde out of her thoughts.

"Good morning," she whispered.

"Morning," he said, not looking at her. He never looked at her in the mornings. Bucky tugged on a shirt and padded to the door. "Sorry," he said, walking out.

Isolde sighed. She knew he was ashamed, but she wished he wasn't. She had told him it was fine, that she didn't mind. And every night, she knew he hesitated in front of her door, walking almost back down to his room before coming back to hers.

Coffee, she thought. Time for coffee. Anything to distract herself from the pathetic pile of sadness her life had turned into.

"Morning Fireball," Tony said as she drifted into the kitchen.

Isolde said, "Morning Tony." Her voice was still a little hoarse from the previous night when she'd been screaming, and woken to Bucky shaking her and whispering it's alright, you're safe over and over again. She cleared your throat. "Build anything interesting lately?" she said.

"Everything I build is interesting. And innovative. Groundbreaking, really." The billionaire pressed a steaming cup of coffee into her hands. "You should come down and see it some time. Oh wait, you might burst into flames. Better not."

She rolled her eyes as she sipped the coffee. It was a well known fact that she wasn't to be allowed into non-fireproofed areas of the compound, and she had come to terms with that. Most places she really wanted to go were fire-proofed, anyways. She was just setting the mug on the counter and tying her hair up into a twisted knot when Bruce walked in, giving Isolde a warm smile.

"Good morning," he said to her and Tony.

Picking her mug back up, she said, "Good morning."

"Sleep well?"

Isolde looked down. "I slept fine."

"That's good," Bruce said. "About today… Isolde."

She didn't reply or look at him.

"Isolde, look at me."

She did.

"I was thinking today we'd work on you calling up your power," he said.

Isolde had known this was coming. Didn't he understand? She could barely keep the fire inside her when it came, and now he wanted her to call it up? She tightened her grip on the cup until her knuckles whitened. Even Tony's specially designed fire-proof suit wouldn't help if her fire burst through the room and exploded. It was already a concession that Bruce was the one working with her, given the risks if the Hulk made an appearance, but he calmed her, so he was willing. She shook her head.

"Kid," Tony said. "You'll be fine."

"You're more in control than you think," Bruce said.

Wrong. She wasn't. Isolde knew she wasn't and she knew that if she did this, if she called the fire forth, she'd never send it back. She couldn't.

She'd leave before she did.


End file.
